


Success and Succeeding

by APgeeksout



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 17:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: “You’re thinking too loud over there, Wilson,” Bucky says into the semi-darkness of Steve’s unfamiliar living room.Sam and Bucky crash with Steve following their final Endgame scene together.





	Success and Succeeding

“You’re thinking too loud over there, Wilson,” Bucky says into the semi-darkness of Steve’s unfamiliar living room. (Sam’s not sure what his place looks like - whether it’s even still there, after five years of vacant neglect - and, while he overheard the Princess assure Barnes of his place in Wakanda, there’s a lot of miles between there and Steve’s suddenly-shaky right hand. It makes a strange kind of sense to him, their sharing space tonight.) “Keeping me awake.”

Sam huffs a laugh and turns once again on the thin - and somehow still too-soft - mattress of the fold-out sofa, picking out Barnes’s silhouette on the next pillow. “Just think what I could do if I really put my mind to being a pain in your ass.”

“Tryin’ to give me more nightmares?” he asks, then, after a moment, quieter, “Penny for ‘em?”

“Penny doesn’t go near as far as it did in your day, old man.” It’s exactly the kind of crack he’s been making for all the years they’ve known each other - he doesn’t actually know how many that is anymore; hasn’t figured out yet where those five years fit between him and everyone else - but it lands differently, with Steve just up the hall, grey-haired and crepe-skinned and with a whole other full life in his rearview. They’re both quiet for a minute before he goes on. “Just trying to get settled. Weird being in another man’s gear.” 

He could be talking about the pjs - the cuffs of the flannel pants dragging a little below his heels and the t-shirt’s v-neck gaping looser around him than it probably does when Cap himself is wearing it. He’s not, and they both know it, but he _could_ be, if Bucky feels like cutting him a break. 

He doesn’t.

“He wants you to have it,” Barnes says, in a tone that means they can’t be talking about anything other than the shield, polished up and resting in pride of place on the breakfast bar in the kitchen of Steve’s Brooklyn apartment, new sometime in the last five. If Sam turned his head just a little back to the left, he’d probably catch the dull gleam of its beveled vibranium edges in the faint streetlight creeping through the blinds. “He thinks you’re gonna do him proud.”

He doesn’t want there to be a lump in his throat over that - of all the shit that’s gone down these past few days, all the shit he’s missed these past few years, all the decades longer Steve and Bucky have had to make their peace with, all the years Nat should have had to live for herself, this shouldn’t be the bit that catches him up - but there is. “Big fucking shoes,” is all he manages to choke past it.

“He grew into ‘em,” Bucky says, after some consideration. “For what it’s worth - and don’t count on me repeating this once the sun’s up - I don’t think he picked wrong.” He shifts so that his elbow - the flesh and bone one: a little less-pointy, a little warmer than the slick Wakandan prosthesis - nudges into the meat of Sam’s arm. “After all, you’re filling out his pajama pants pretty well from what I saw.”

He laughs a little at that - because what the hell else can he do while he’s sleeping (or, not-sleeping) in Steve’s clothes, on his spare bed, next to his best friend, while he’s got time scheduled with Maria tomorrow to game-plan the press conference where he’ll take over the guy’s identity, too - and says, “I guess I always figured, if he ever decided to hang it up, it’d be you he picked to step in.”

“Nah,” Bucky says, and though Sam’s not looking at him, he feels it when he shakes his head against the pillow. “He didn’t ask, and if he had, I would’ve shot him down. I might not have found a way to look the part yet, but I’m old enough to be tired of the fight. S’not what they built that shield for.”

Sam’s quiet for a bit after that, silently feeling out the weight of the shield and the mantle, gauging it out against the Falcon suit. It’s long enough that he wonders if Barnes thinks he’s already drifted off when he speaks up again.

“Still on board to be Captain America’s wingman,” he offers, “if he’ll even still need something like that, considering.”

“Yeah?” he says, rolling back onto his side to look at Bucky’s profile in the near-darkness. “Consider yourself on tap for sidekick duty, then. Promise we’ll get you a real cool pair of tights to go under your booty-shorts.”

He really is almost out again by the time Bucky runs out of muffled curse words, and this time at least Sam’s sure there’s a smile on his face when he fades out of this world into whatever’s waiting for them tomorrow.


End file.
